Sparkles / Iron Deficiency Man
If anyone could understand the concept of showing the world one thing all while being something else, it was Tony Stark. He'd been lucky though -- he'd already been written off as a drunk, as eccentric, as someone snide and narcissistic and smug and he'd managed getting away with a lot without anyone thinking any wiser. Hell, he'd been days from death of his own literal design and panicking to the core, but he'd been good enough at pretending that no one had even noticed. Or, no one close to him anyway.
Well. That hadn't been lucky. It'd just been what he'd wanted at the time, because it'd been easier to ignore, easier to drown in that fear than really try and deal with it or have anyone he loved talk to him about dealing with it. Tony didn't have good advice for that though, not really, because he felt like the only way he sort of got over fears, guilts and failures was by finding brand new ones to obsess over.
Still, there were mistakes he'd made, things that were his fault that he had been able to deal with a bit more constructively.
"Well," he said, glancing up at the sky for a moment, tucking his hands into his pockets to appear as casual and harmless as possible. "My answer doesn't exactly change for that. You make a mistake, you try and find a way to fix it. And I know it seems like a moot detail because we haven't lived it, but -- you did do that. Some version of you kept going to try and make things right and it made a difference. Countless people and civilizations are alive right now because you got back up."